Barkley L. Hendricks - “My Mechanical Sketchbook”

ART FORUM

Barkley L. Hendricks - “My Mechanical Sketchbook”

ROSE ART MUSEUM
415 South Street
Brandeis University
February 10–July 24, 2022

It is not surprising that Barkley L. Hendricks (1945–2017) excelled at photography, or that his pictures were often source material for his flamboyant and intimate paintings of Black life in the years after the civil rights movement. Yet the relationship between the two media across his magnificent and beloved oeuvre has only recently been discussed, sparked by the posthumous discovery of some of his previously unknown photographic work. Hendricks’s exhibition at the Rose Art Museum, “My Mechanical Sketchbook”—a reference to the artist’s name for his camera—presents a focused assortment of photographs (including Polaroids), paintings, and works on paper created between 1966 and 2016.